Trayvon Martin(February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012) was an African American teenager who was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a multiracial man (Peruvian mother, Caucasian father)[4][5][9][10][11][12] in Sanford, Florida. Martin, who was unarmed, had been walking to his father’s home from a convenience store when Zimmerman called 911 and followed Martin after witnessing what he described as “suspicious” behavior.[13] Soon afterward, he fatally shot Martin during an altercation between the two

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About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles.
Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures.
A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.

Afternoon, POU! I went to church this morning to see my teenage nephew play an original composition on the piano during the service. The service itself was wonderful, and the pastor, ushers, youth, and other members all wore their hoodies and had a special prayer for all children and families affected by gun violence. The sermon focused on the importance of social justice in strengthening one’s own faith.

In the Trayvon Martin case, the people pushing back against the current established “narrative” (of an unarmed teen being shot and killed while walking to his father’s home- in other words, the facts), and attempting to break up the uniting American front that is calling out for justice, are not doing so for a man named George. Honestly, I get the feeling that Zimmerman doesn’t have many friends or defenders in his life. The people you see crawling into the media spotlight right now are there to serve one purpose; not to defend George Zimmerman, but to discredit and trivialize the situation (including the real victim, Trayvon Martin). Why? Because this situation, as outrageous and tragic as it was, was a spark that a lot of people needed to get up and demand equal respect and equal protection. Why else would anyone stoop to slander a dead teen who was not a public figure, not a delinquent, and did nothing to justify him being stalked and killed? I’ll tell you why: Because the nation is mobilizing, and the ones who have always gained and retained power by keeping us divided and suppressed do not know how to control it.

They. Are. Scared.

And now they are attempting to slow the rising tide by throwing in confusion, innuendo, and accusations of “reverse” bias. It’s so important that we stay focused and not allow negative influences to affect the passion for seeking justice or to turn the purposeful, nonviolent protests into disorganized riots.

Somewhere, in some back room, politicos and media experts are racking their brains trying to figure out how such a movement could start without them. And when POTUS chimed in so eloquently, many people saw his words as an “official” stamp. This will not go away, even if the shooter is finally arrested. What we’re seeing right now is more coherent and heartfelt than anything the Tea Party, the Occupiers, or any other movement could muster, because it’s about something real.

Well, it’s really, really ugly. On two fronts: the racist, unjustified killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, black teenager, and then, to make the situation even more grotesque, some really awful, amateurish, disgraceful attorney-press interactions by a lawyer who says he is representing the killer.

I’ve been raging about the murder of Trayvon Martin. I’m disgusted by it. I want to see George Zimmerman arrested, indicted, tried and convicted. In short order. And I’m enraged by all of the bogus excuses for why the process of charging him has been so delayed. I confess to being extremely angry.

And as if all of that weren’t enough, I’m also shocked and disgusted by the “lawyering,” if that’s what it is, the accused, George Zimmerman is receiving in the media.

Look, if George Zimmerman is guilty of the homicide of Trayvon Martin, and I’m virtually certain he is, he is entitled in the United States to the effective assistance of counsel of his choice. And like it or not, counsel has to interact in big cases like this one with the press in a way that doesn’t make the client’s case worse. Counsel’s job isn’t to promote himself as a celebrity. It’s to protect his client, to make him more sympathetic, to assert the presumption of innocence. Or at the least to act as a shield. Counsel has to do all of the things he can that will prevent George Zimmerman from being completely convicted in the media before a trial is ever held. It’s a hard, unthankful job. But in our system, that’s the job that is required of whoever is representing him.

But if you look at George Zimmerman’s “defense,” and even using that term pains me in this case, it’s a pathetic mishmash of contradictions, disclaimers, and down right stupidity. It’s a disgrace. I’ve never seen anything as awful. And I say that based on being a criminal defense attorney for more than thirty years and having had to, on more than a few occasions, get my client’s story out.

George Zimmerman is in hiding because he wasn’t immediately arrested and charged with the homicide of Trayvon Martin. Nobody can explain satisfactorily why Zimmerman is still at large. In fact, he shouldn’t be. He would be better off if he weren’t. But he hasn’t spoken to the press. No. He’s enlisted friends to talk to the press. And he has a lawyer talking to the press. But is this lawyer really representing Zimmerman, or is he creating a huge, public relations calamity and credibility crisis for his client? Sadly, I think it’s the latter.

This past Friday, Craig Sonner, an Orlando lawyer, gave an interview to CNN. He said he was Zimmerman’s lawyer and that his client wasn’t a racist. But, as to the details of the crime,

Sonner refused to share the details of his conversations with Zimmerman, citing attorney-client privilege, but did say that the former neighborhood watchman has cooperated with the investigation. He also declined to share any of the specifics of his defense strategy, saying:

I don’t know what all the evidence is, and what transpired that night. That’s what the trial’s going to be about, and that’s hopefully what the trial will stay about, and not about being angry over a racial issue.

What? “I don’t know what all the evidence is, and what transpired that night.” You have to be kidding me. Sonner is representing Zimmerman, his conversations with Zimmerman about the crime have been privileged, but, and this is one big, fat but, he doesn’t “know what all the evidence is.” Are you kidding? That’s incredible on its face. How can the lawyer representing the defendant in the most publicized, most hotly debated incident since OJ, not know what the evidence is. And if he doesn’t know what the evidence is, why is he talking to the press about what he doesn’t know rather than ferreting it out? What kind of bogus disclaimer is this?

But wait. On Friday, despite all the press and all of the talking about the case, according to WFTV, Craig Sonner said, no, he was NOT representing Zimmerman. He was NOT his lawyer. He was “just advising him.” So he’s not Zimmerman’s lawyer? Why are the media talking to him about this case if he doesn’t represent even the shooter?

Very nice. But don’t worry. This distinction about “lawyer” vs. “legal advisor” was immediately thrown out. The next day, March 24, Craig Sonner, again identifying himself as Zimmerman’s lawyer, was interviewed by CNN. He said he “believed” Zimmerman’s nose had been broken and the back of his head had lacerations. Then he uttered this astonishing sentence:

“I have not discussed with him the incident of that night other than the injury he sustained were from Trayvon Martin,” Sooner replied. “I assume he hit him in the face and caused him to fall back and hit his head.”

What? Wait a second. You are the guy’s lawyer. OK, maybe you’re not. But you’re talking to the press supposedly in his behalf and supposedly with his authorization, and you tell the press (a) you have not discussed with Zimmerman the incident of that night, and forget whether I learned what happened or not or discussed it with the shooter, none of that matters, because (b) it was self defense. Oh. And I “assume” something happened? Jeepers.

How is anyone supposed to believe a shred of what this guy is saying? Doesn’t his even saying it now subvert it and discredit it? He’s definitely not out there saying, “Look, if my client committed a crime, and we don’t think he did, he will surrender to authorities as soon as they say they want him to. He’s presumed innocent. We have nothing further to say to the press about this case, and we won’t have anything further to say until the case is resolved.” No. He’s talking about whatever he wants to, and it’s a gumbo of disclaimer, hypothecation, assumption and incredibility.

If you want to know why the health-care debate has been so pathological, take a moment to read William Kristol’s editorial in the Weekly Standard. The theme of the editorial is that Mitt Romney is undesirable because he is a technocrat. “What Republican primary voters sense,” Kristol editorializes, “is that a technocratic and managerial mindset could prove an obstacle to coming to grips with the situation we face.” Romney seeks — or once sought — through data and detailed analysis. This, according to esteemed conservative intellectual William Kristol, is bad.

This hostility to empiricism has defined the conservative approach to health care. How else could a concept developed by a conservative think tank, implemented by a Republican governor, and largely uncontroversial within the conservative world suddenly become the death of freedom? Because the conservative movement’s understanding of concepts like “freedom” is a hazy ideological abstraction, unmoored from factual grounding, that can attach itself to nearly any partisan position. If you’re uninterested in the details (or even, like Kristol, actively hostile to the very idea of being interested in the details) then your disposition toward one idea can easily lurch from mildly supportive to hysterically in opposition.

A telling case in point came last week. The Congressional Budget Office issued an update on the costs of the Affordable Care Act. Congress (stupidly, I think) designed the law to phase in slowly, so that its provisions took several years to take effect. When CBO first scored the budgetary effects of the law in 2010, it included the first few years in which not much was happening. Its revised ten-year score two years later now loses two years of nothing on the front end, and includes two more years on the back end in which the law is in full effect.

The CBO update prompted a new round of conservative frenzy. “The CBO foresees 87 percent overrun, not even 24 months into this boondoggle,” cries National Review’s Deroy Murdock. “The Congressional Budget Office has extended its cost estimates for President Obama’s health-care law out to 2022, taking in more years of full implementation, and showing that the bill is substantially more expensive — twice as much as the original $900 billion price tag,” reports Fox News. Nearly every corner of the conservative media world repeated the story.

The outcry was so widespread that the CBO took the unusual step of releasing a second update to explain to outraged conservatives that they were completely misreading the whole thing:

Some of the commentary on those reports has suggested that CBO and JCT have changed their estimates of the effects of the ACA to a significant degree. That’s not our perspective. …

Although the latest projections extend the original ones by three years (corresponding to the shift in the regular ten-year projection period since the ACA was first being developed), the projections for each given year have changed little, on net, since March 2010.

Politico is highlighting a lengthy, as well as classically craven, Mitt Romney quote from a Weekly Standard interview, in which the former governor attempts to elevate deliberate ambiguity and unsubtle shiftiness to the high artifice of principled politics. To summarize in the interest of space, Romney says he’ll cut government, but refuses to say how. Interviewer Stephen Hayes observes in scattered emotional eruptions:

It’s a smart answer and a deeply conservative one….

Romney, ever cautious, is reluctant to get specific about the programs he would like to kill….

In a conversation with him, you can feel him thinking about his words….

Why have conservative interviewers become so touchy-feely? Really, this is getting out of hand, and it’s been doing so since 2008, when National Review’s Rich Lowry gushed:

I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, ‘Hey, I think she just winked at me.’ And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned.

Then and there, I suspect, Rich was indeed feeling himself (while) thinking about her winks and words.

But, back to Mr. Hayes’ feelings, as well as Mitt’s words/winks — the substantive quality of which we’d love to learn, but Mitt just won’t permit it. It gets worse. Having refused to unveil the government programs he’d cut, Romney then turns and says to Hayes:

I describe what my positions are on issues and lay out my policy and people will either warm to it or not, depending upon how they connect with it.

But of course Romney does not “describe what [his] positions are.” In fact he had pointedly told Hayes that he wouldn’t describe them.

One must gather up pluck and soldier on to the Romney interview’s very end, however, to really “feel him thinking” like the unctuous Zelig he is:

Romney’s critique of Obama is often focused on competence more than ideology. “He’s a nice guy, but he’s in over his head,” Romney often says.

Why not say more about ideology? Romney says the two critiques are mutually reinforcing.

Obama, he says, has an “agenda which is contrary to the interests of the economy and the nation. And I think a lot of people who have that agenda are clueless.”

Thus ends the interview on a note you probably noticed: on a final, “I’ll put it however you want me to put it” Mitt Romney note — a pol whose focus is often on “competence,” but hey, Stephen, if you want “ideology,” then by God Romney will give you that instead.

As Rich Lowry said with an epistemological certainty in which we must place our hope and trust: “This is a quality that can’t be learned.”

While checking facebook today, I came across a post about how the ‘liberal media’ is trying to stir up racial issues and hide the truth about Trayvon Martin – see for yourself:

Yep, it’s got it all, Trayvon is really 6’2″, and evidently a ‘gangsta’ and the media is only showing us his 12 year old picture…
It’s disgusting because the comments under this post have people defending Zimmerman, saying he was getting beat up by the 6’2″ ‘gangsta’ when he pulled his weapon.

Fortunately, someone showed up and presented the truth about this:
This is another Trayvon Martin facebook page being used to defend this horrific act.

I would like to extend my very deepest sympathies to the family and other loved ones of murdered teenager, Treyvon Martin. I am very sad today (and am certain the whole of Ireland is) to learn of poor Treyvon’s terrifying ordeal and horrified by the fact his known and named and admitted killer has not been arrested, despite the crime having taken place a month ago. This is a disgrace to the entire human race.

For those out there who believe black people to be less than pure royalty, let me inform you of a little known, but scientifically proven, many times over, FACT. Which after reading, you will hopefully feel both very stupid and very sorry. For you dishonor your own mothers and grandmothers.

EVERY human being on earth, no matter what their culture, creed, skin colour, or nationality, shares one gene traceable back to one African woman. Scientists have named it ‘The Eve Gene’. This means ALL of us, even ridiculously stupid, ignorant, perverted, blaspheming racists are the descendants of one African woman.

One African woman is the mother of all of us. Africa was the first world. You come from there! Your skin may be ‘white’.. because you didn’t need it to be black any more where you lived. But as Curtis Mayfield said.. “You’re just the surface of our dark, deep well”. So you’re being morons. And God is having the last laugh at your ignorant expense.

If you hate black people, its yourself you hate. And the mother who bore you. If you kill or wish ill on black people, its yourself you kill and wish ill on. As well as the mother who bore you.

When you dishonor the the utter glory and majesty of black people, you lie. Your heart lies to you and you let it. Despite seeing every day, all your life, how you and your country would be less than wonderfully functioning and inspiring to the world, without the manifold and glorious contributions made by the descendants of African slaves, who did not by the way actually ask to go to America and leave their future families there to be disrespected for eternity.

What are you doing hating yourself by hating your brothers and sisters who daily show you nothing but inspiration and love, despite having NOTHING, in their own country? Despite having barely a chance of anything, because of racism. Despite being granted no ‘permission’ for proper self-esteem.

These beautiful people continue to believe in and even manifest Jesus Christ better than you do. That alone could stand as the greatest reason your racism is blasphemy, were it not for all the other reasons.

These people you hate and fear ARE the body of Christ, just as we all are. Every child, woman or man. And they know it. Maybe thats why you cant bear to look at them. Because you see Jesus Christ and you cant stand the light.

Stop this ridiculous and uneducated attitude. You would be dead without black people. Think of all the greatest music ever composed. The greatest songs. The greatest inspirational heroes.. Muhammad Ali, Mandela, Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Soujourner Truth, Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Curtis Mayfield. So many absolute angels, sent from God.

……………………………………

We came from one mother. We are all brothers and sisters. And we CAN get beyond this ILLUSION of separateness. With prayer and love. It CAN change. It WILL change. And YOU guys (young people of all kinds) are the ones who are gonna GENTLY change it. And you know where it starts? With MUSIC.

Don’t be guided by rap. Gangsta or otherwise. Sure.. enjoy it.. adore it.as I do.. but realize this.. rap ain’t about your civil or spiritual rights, baby boys and girls. It.. along with most music nowadays.. is about falsenesses and vanities. Bling, drugs, sex, guns and people- dissing. Its giving you the message you ain’t ‘good enough’ if you don’t have bling and ting.. and money. Or if you’re not what it deems ‘sexy’.

(This is true of all popular music not rap alone. I know. Its tragically true of all popular youth culture the world over).

Poor Curtis Mayfield must be crying all day and night ALL day and night in heaven, every day and night.. To see what has been so successfully achieved by those who sent guns, drugs, and bling to squash the civil rights movement. Now you all don’t have to be murdered by racists any more.. you’re murdering each other FOR them! And your parents and grandparents are left crying.

Go back to strong black musical guides who left you information in the 60s and 70s. when they were living through the civil rights struggle. Curtis Mayfield. The Impressions. Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson. Sing back the Holy Spirit ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, as those artists did.

Appearing on Face the Nation Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that he was sending a letter to the Department of Justice asking them to expand the investigation into the killing of Trayvon Martin and launch an investigation of the “general application of these ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws.” He wants to know “whether they actually increase, rather than decrease violence, and whether they actually prevent law enforcement from prosecuting cases where a real crime has been committed.” Schumer said he hopes there will be hearings in Congress about these laws.

George Zimmerman, who admitted to shooting and killing unarmed Trayvon Martin in Florida, is using Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law to claim it was self-defense.

In an apparent new messaging tactic for 2012, White House senior adviser adviser David Plouffe labeled the new Paul Ryan budget the “Romney-Ryan plan,” seeking to tether the GOP presidential frontrunner to the budget blueprint released last week.

“The Ryan plan — which, by the way, is supported by the presidential candidates. So Mitt Romney is the frontrunner, this is really the Romney-Ryan plan,” Plouffe said on Fox News Sunday. “It will be rubber-stamped if Mitt Romney is elected president. It fails the test of balance, and fairness and shared responsibility. It showers huge tax cuts on millionaires and billionaires, paid for by seniors and veterans.”

“The right approach is the president’s approach,” he added, grilled by Chris Wallace on the president’s budget. “That also allows our economy to grow. It doesn’t strangle education, doesn’t gut investments in clean energy. So, it’s the right path to grow the economy and reduce the deficit.”

Mitt Romney cost crushed in Louisiana last night, losing in every parish except Orleans. Here’s an example of why Romney did so badly:

Jules Richard, 67, an accountant, used a backhanded compliment to describe his feelings about Romney.

“I think he’s the best politician in the race,” Richard said. “He gives people what they want to hear.” Richard said he voted for Santorum but would have no problem supporting Romney in the general election. “I voted for Santorum just to annoy Romney, really,” he said.

Most of the people the Washington Post interviewed expressed at least a tepid intention to support Romney in November despite labeling him a RINO or saying things like, “Gingrich is a straight shooter, and Romney just works around the truth till he gets what he wants.”

In truth, voters will make up the minds about whether or not to vote based on more than just their enthusiasm for the candidate. If the polls show that their state isn’t close, they may find more productive things to do than vote. In the aftermath of the post-Katrina black-exodus, Louisiana is one of the last states that Obama might win. If the state were close, these folks might overcome their ambivalence and go to the polls. Their motivation to vote for a soulless hack who will easily win their state while losing badly nationally may be negligible.

One possible consequence of this is that the Romney campaign will feel compelled to ramp up fear of Obama as a motivator since attracting strong support for their candidate just isn’t possible.

As for Santorum, his immediate project should be to win Wisconsin and figure out a way to appeal to voters in Maryland. Romney has reached the halfway mark in accumulating delegates and he’s going to benefit in April as the race moves to the Washington-New York-Boston corridor.

ALBANY — Senate Democrats not only lost the fight for independent redistricting, but managed to alienate the man they are asking to help them reclaim the chamber this fall — Gov. Cuomo.

“It’s substantive and political incompetence, which is everything we’ve come to know from the Senate Democrats,” said a Dem insider.

Rather than just state their case and focus their attacks on the Republicans, Senate Democratic Campaign Committee Chairman Michael Gianaris and others grew frustrated when Cuomo retreated from his pledge to veto district lines drawn by the Legislature.

The Democratic insider said the strategy was “just the latest in a series of embarrassments we’ve seen from the Senate Democrats” over the years.

The Dems not only looked like hypocrites because they didn’t take up independent redistricting when they briefly controlled the chamber, but they angered a popular governor who Gianaris has insisted will campaign for them this fall, the source said.

Cuomo has said he will wait until the end of the legislative session in June to decide whether he will actively support the Senate Dems, who are in debt and have far less cash on hand than the GOP.

A source with close ties to the Senate Dems said Cuomo may be forced to help because he has angered fellow Dems, liberals and unions both in New York and nationally.

Senate Democratic spokesman Michael Murphy said the conference is “proud” of its progressive positions — including a call for “true government reform.”

Silver losing clout?

A long-simmering generational split among Assembly Democrats has begun to boil — and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver could be the one feeling the heat.

A host of veteran lawmakers have left the chamber in recent years and been replaced by young guns with less loyalty to Silver.

Some were livid last week at how Silver and his aides twisted their arms to vote for Cuomo’s pension reform plan. Silver ultimately needed minority party votes to pass the bill — something almost unheard of in Albany.

One newer Democrat who did not bow to the pressure complained that the same heat was not put on veteran lawmakers like Manhattan’s Deborah Glick, who enjoy committee chairmanships and are safer in their districts.

“They get everything and then they’re let off on the tough votes,” said one rankled member. “When Stanley Fink was speaker, he would say, ‘If you’re a committee chair, you’re part of the leadership and you’re voting yes.’”

When Gov. Mitt Romney signed legislation in April 2006 requiring most Massachusetts residents to have health coverage, Senator Edward M. Kennedy stood by his side, beaming like a proud father. They were onstage at historic Faneuil Hall in Boston, a setting that had a special resonance for the two.

Twelve years earlier, they shared that stage as opponents in a bitter Senate race. Back then, Mr. Romney accused Mr. Kennedy of waging “untrue, unfair and sleazy” personal attacks. Now, the Republican governor was introducing the liberal Democratic senator as “my collaborator and friend.”

Mr. Romney’s complicated relationship with Mr. Kennedy, from campaign foe to health care partner, helped shape both his political career and his image. Today, as a Republican candidate for president, he is courting conservative voters, a constituency that does not look kindly upon Mr. Kennedy or the Romney approach to health care, which will come under scrutiny again this week when the Supreme Court takes up challenges to a similar measure championed by President Obama.

But try as he might to distance himself, Mr. Romney cannot escape Mr. Kennedy’s influence. On the campaign trail, he uses the senator, who died in 2009, as a foil, denouncing Mr. Kennedy’s “liberal welfare state” policies and boasting of how Mr. Kennedy “had to take out a mortgage on his house to make sure he could defeat me.”

He has said losing to Mr. Kennedy was “the best thing” that could have happened to him, “because it put me back in the private sector.”

Mr. Romney’s attempt in 1994 to “out-Kennedy Kennedy,” as people here say, led him to take stands on issues like abortion and gay rights that he has since backed away from, giving rise to accusations that he is a flip-flopper. Mr. Kennedy’s tough campaign advertisements, which portrayed Mr. Romney as a cold-hearted financier, rattled him, and his bruising loss in the race “viscerally pained” him, one friend said.

But he emerged tougher, convinced that it is better to punch first than to counterpunch later — lessons his campaign is putting to use today.

“Romney was the young up-and-comer in ’94 who thought that the aging champ had lost his edge and was then surprised to get knocked out,” said Rob Gray, a Republican strategist who advised Mr. Romney in his 2002 race for governor. “That certainly caused him to reassess how any future campaign should be built.”

The two men could not have been more different. Mr. Kennedy was the back-slapping Irish pol with the rakish past; Mr. Romney the upstanding businessman who viewed Mr. Kennedy with some disdain. While they eventually joined forces, theirs was a transactional relationship. Despite Mr. Romney’s glowing Faneuil Hall introduction, they never truly became friends.

“I just don’t think they spoke the same language,” said Scott M. Ferson, a former Kennedy aide and Romney neighbor who became a bridge between the two.

They did extend courtesies to each other. Mr. Kennedy lent his support to the construction of a Mormon temple in Belmont, Mass., a project just minutes from Mr. Romney’s home and dear to him. Later, as governor, Mr. Romney turned up during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston for the dedication of a ribbon of parks named for Mr. Kennedy’s mother, Rose.

But it was their work on health care, a lifelong passion for Mr. Kennedy, that may have had the most enduring impact on Mr. Romney. The legislation gave him national standing to run for president in 2008, only to emerge as a political liability in the current campaign in a way that neither man could have foreseen.

“It’s an irony with a capital I,” said Jeffrey M. Berry, a political scientist at Tufts University who followed their careers. “From the grave, Ted Kennedy is involved in the Republican race for the presidency.”

that his 16 year old kid was a real handful at times and he said he thgouht a lot of it had to do with TV, movies, internet and music.That really opened the door into who owns and control most of those things.I took out a 20 dollar bill and said this is the real problem . He just kind of looked at me confused. I then said see what is says along the top ? It says Federal Reserve Bank .I then asked him if he ever heard of the National Debt. He said, of course . So, I asked him who it was owed to. He answered, China ?I said no the debt is owed to a group of private bankers .I explained the whole money scam using the flour, and cup analogy where a pile of flour of a certain size represents all of the goods and services in the economy and the measuring cup represents money . He understood that.Then I explained how the cup is magically transformed into a smaller sized cup by inflation which is the intentional adding of currency into the economy without a corresponding addition to the volume of goods and services in the economy.He was still with me Then I described how what used to be 1 cup was now 1/2 cup but it was still labelled 1 cup . And I asserted that he gets paid in cups . Cups = dollars.And he was still with me ..He said that he now understood why his money wasn’t buying as much as it used to.I told him that yes, it’s intentional and in addition to his money not going as far as it used to in the grocery store it’s getting harder to pay the mortgage due to the same pressures .and that’s intentional as well. Because the banks can then foreclose at will.You should have seen the look on this guys face. He looked like he was going to be sick. Then he looked angry.Finally, I told him who was behind it all.So, hopefully this guy tells other people. The whole interaction took maybe 20 minutes out of my day.

House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) says that he would be willing to “consider” accepting a nomination to be his party’s vice presidential nominee.

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday asked Ryan if he would accept the VP slot if the Republican presidential nominee wanted him to be on the ticket to help sell the GOP’s controversial new budget that slashes government spending.

“It’s not a bridge that I’ve even come close to crossing,” Ryan explained. “It’s a decision that somebody else makes and a long time from now. … I can’t answer that question because I haven’t given enough thought to that.”

But you’re leaving the door open,” Wallace noted. “You’re saying, ‘If I were asked, I would have to consider it.’”

“I would have to consider it,” Ryan agreed. “But it’s not something I’m even thinking about right now because I think our job in Congress is pretty important.”

White House senior advisor David Plouffe on Sunday hinted that the Obama campaign was ready for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to team up with Ryan.

1st I want to say Let’s pray for Al Shapton he looks very very tied especially losing his mom. 2nd I pray for Joe Oliver that the will see the faces,hear the crys of those cried,and feel the heart beat of terror of every black boy and man while they were being killed,3rd get saved,speak in tongues confess he was wrong and give back the money he was paid.
4th I pray that zimmerman will confess beg God for mercy go to prison and minister to those who has committed the very same crime. my heart is broken i just can’t explain the pain.

Atheists, non-theists, secularists and others who say they believe in reason, not God, gathered Saturday on the Mall for the first Reason Rally, where they pledged to stand up for their beliefs in a society that they say sometimes views them with skepticism and distrust.

“God is a myth,” said Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists. “Closet atheists, you are not alone.”

Despite intermittent rain, several thousand people gathered on the lawn across from the National Museum of American History to hear a roster of speakers that included comedians, activists and the first openly atheistic member of Congress — Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.).

Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama urged China on Sunday to use its influence to rein in North Korea instead of “turning a blind eye” to its nuclear defiance, and warned of tighter sanctions if the reclusive state goes ahead with a rocket launch next month.

“North Korea will achieve nothing by threats or provocations,” a stern-faced Obama said after a tour of the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas resonant with echoes of the Cold War.

Such a launch would only lead to further isolation of the impoverished North, which much show its sincerity if on-again-off-again six-party aid-for-disarmament talks are to restart, Obama told a news conference in the South Korean capital.

Seoul and Washington say the launch will be a disguised test of a ballistic missile that violates Pyongyang’s latest international commitments. North Korea says it merely wants to put a satellite into orbit.

Even as Obama warned North Korea of the consequences of its actions, he spoke bluntly to China, the closest thing Pyongyang has to an ally, of its international obligations.

Obama said Beijing’s actions of “rewarding bad behavior (and) turning a blind eye to deliberate provocations” were obviously not working, and he promised to raise the matter at a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Seoul on Monday.

ABC panel ARE CRAZY. Zimmerman killed Trayvon because he was black. The white male on the panel is saying this is not about a war on black men. OH YES THERE IS A WAR, DUDE! I hate it when these shows bring on white men to talk about black issues.

CAMP BONIFAS, S. Korea — President Obama made his first visit to Korea’s demilitarized zone Sunday, telling U.S. troops that the contrast between South and North Korea “could not be starker.”

Addressing 50 U.S. soldiers in the mess hall at this U.N. command post, Obama thanked them for their service at “freedom’s frontier” on the divided peninsula.

Obama said that the differences in freedom and prosperity between the two nations were striking and that “the reason the South is doing well can be attributed to the resilience of their people and their talents and hard work.”

“When I think about the transformation that has taken place in my lifetime,” Obama said, “it is directly attributable to the long line of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guard who are willing to create space and opportunity for freedom and prosperity. . . . I could not be prouder of you.”

The president wore a black bomber-style jacket presented to him by Gen. James Thurman, the United Nations’ commanding general here.

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